The Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2 has been released for Approval to Apple today (7 July). Which means that typically in about 7 days from now it should be available in the iOS App Store. As with previous releases this version is FREE for download by any iOS device owner. Here is a short video showing some last minute cosmetic changes;

Very cool! Thanks a lot.Will you guys implement other iOs-UI elements in the future as well?Is your goal to replace the whole (proxy) orbiter-UI with native-OS elements?

Br Raymond

Thanks for your comments :-)

I think you can assume that our ultimate goal is to re-invent the way UI's for LinuxMCE & Dianemo are designed/created/implemented making the whole process more accessible to UI designers. The iOS Touch Orbiter 1.2 and our QT Touch Orbiter is a step along that road and you will see some more enhancements to the Interactive Layer in the near future. However the Interactive Layer is probably just a 'stepping stone' technology - its a fast win in that we can deliver a good level of new capability and to a large extent it does not require any new effort in terms of UI development ie it enhances existing Skins for no additional effort etc. However 'under the hood' we still have all that nasty legacy code being executed and the new proxy_orbiter does an 'on the fly' conversion of some design objects into XML and hands that back to the Touch Orbiter. This approach probably cant be extended to the whole UI though without it becoming another big mess of 'goo' on top of the mess that is the current implementation of Orbiter!

So ultimately something cleaner more extensible and complete is needed and that is likely to be something more like golgoj4's QML based Orbiter approach as it will allow designers to build UI's in QML. However whether we implement this approach or another in future versions of Touch Orbiter is still not decided. What you can be sure of is that we will deliver something in this area and that the Touch Orbiter codebase will be updated - and the iOS App will be part of this too.

It doesn't really. As i describe in the response above the Interactive Layer in Touch Orbiter 1.2 is probably not a long term solution but it does give us some real usable capability in terms of delivering some more dynamic UI right now.

Golgoj4's approach is a more funder mental re-engineering of the Orbiter and ultimately is probably pretty close to where we think we need to be but its not deliverable today and will need a lot more work before its something that could replace what we have today. So the two work along side one another really delivering new capability now on one hand while the other technology is worked up and completed.

It doesn't really. As i describe in the response above the Interactive Layer in Touch Orbiter 1.2 is probably not a long term solution but it does give us some real usable capability in terms of delivering some more dynamic UI right now.

Golgoj4's approach is a more funder mental re-engineering of the Orbiter and ultimately is probably pretty close to where we think we need to be but its not deliverable today and will need a lot more work before its something that could replace what we have today. So the two work along side one another really delivering new capability now on one hand while the other technology is worked up and completed.

All the best

Andrew

Hi Andrew... very impressive work. Looks very smooth. Images seem to be loading much quicker now.

I know golgoj4 would appreciate the help reaching the common goal of re-engineering the UI. He is deep in the bowels now, and it is pretty murky in there. I understand you have limited resources to attach to day to day operations/support/development. I know spare time is probably a laughable concept... but clearly the work is overwhelming, and it would be a terrible shame if he drowned when you have such impressive and rare life preservers.

Hi Andrew... very impressive work. Looks very smooth. Images seem to be loading much quicker now.

I know golgoj4 would appreciate the help reaching the common goal of re-engineering the UI. He is deep in the bowels now, and it is pretty murky in there. I understand you have limited resources to attach to day to day operations/support/development. I know spare time is probably a laughable concept... but clearly the work is overwhelming, and it would be a terrible shame if he drowned when you have such impressive and rare life preservers.

Hi,

Thanks. Yes the earlier versions I showed in my videos had a bug in the code that manages how the images are rendered and sometimes images hat had been downloaded were flagged as not available and this slowed things down a fair bit. That bug was squashed ;-).

We're still looking at the best way to deliver better UI technology and better UI design capability while making sure that we can move a future Orbiter to any device that seems appropriate with minimum effort. Golgoj4's work is impressive and we like it a whole lot but we have not come to a decision yet about our direction on this. Whatever we do in this area you can be sure it will be made available to the community under the GPL - that is a given.

Whichever way we go on this golgoj4 can always get some input from us if he needs to.

Just to let everyone know that the Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2 has been approved by the Apple iOS App store this evening. So inside the next 24 hours you will see the new App become available on the App store.